During the drilling, stimulation, completion, and production phases of wells for petroleum or water extraction, the downhole use of compositions having high viscosities is important for a wide variety of purposes. Higher viscosity fluids can more effectively carry materials to a desired location downhole, such as proppants. The use of higher viscosity fluids during hydraulic fracturing generally results in larger more dominant fractures. Higher viscosity drilling fluids can more effectively carry materials away from a drilling location downhole.
One common way to attain high viscosities in drilling fluids is to use a mixture of water and a viscosifier, such as guar gum. However, typically viscosifiers must be added in high concentrations to provide viscosities sufficient to suspend a desired proppant or to suspend drill cuttings, which can result in high transportation costs and low efficiency preparation of viscous materials. However, pumping high viscosity materials downhole can require a large amount of energy. Also, the higher temperatures experienced downhole can limit, reduce, or degrade the effectiveness of certain viscosifiers, resulting in the use of larger amounts of viscosifiers to compensate for the high temperatures, or the use of expensive temperature-resistant viscosifiers. In addition, the presence of certain ions in water can limit, reduce, or degrade the effectiveness of certain viscosifiers. This limits the use of certain ion-containing water, such as sea water, or water recovered from or naturally produced by some subterranean formations. As a result, the oil and gas industry spends substantial amounts of money and energy to use large amounts of viscosifiers to compensate for the salt sensitivity, obtain expensive salt-resistant viscosifiers, obtain fresh water used for drilling fluid or fracturing fluid applications, or to avoid formations having substantial concentrations of particular ions.